The Byrds, "Younger than Yesterday"

 

Released in 1967, the Byrds' fourth album YOUNGER THAN YESTERDAY saw the band saw the band having to commit itself to releasing a record after the recent loss of their principle and prolific songwriter and lead singer Gene Clark. To be sure , Clark's departure is said to have been caused by a money dispute ; he received more royalties than other band members because of his songwriting contributions.

Admirably, Roger (née Jim) McGuinn. Chris Hillman and David Crosby took up the loss and contributed high caliber material to fill in the void left by Clark, the result being YOUNGER THAN YESTERDAY, which I would argue is their best and most important record and certainly, one of the best and most important studio albums by an American rock band in the Sixties. Clark's absence force the other members to draw on their own musical passions and, taking their cue boldly from what the Beatles were doing with their experiments, handily expanded their sound far beyond the jangling-folk rock that initially launched them . The harmonies remain without peer, and we saw the very early integration of jazz, Indian raga, country and western , psychedelia and electronics into their musical weave.

Smart, disciplined production by Gary Usher keeps this record form becoming a swamp of overcooked pretensions--he was the man who had the job to say "that's enough". SO YOU WANNA BE A ROCK AND ROLL STAR, EVERYBODY'S BEEN BURNED, WHY, RENAISSANCE FAIR, TIME BETWEEN-- the songs are first rate and the confidence these fellows confront all the alien influence and make part of their sound and legacy is remarkable. It sounds fresh, alive, 53 years after its release. The only down side on this disc is the last track on the last side (from the original release) , Mind Garden", an unnavigable mind-blown miasma from David Crosby .

It was the day, I suppose, when drugs were exciting, most of us working day jobs after school to have cash to buy records from major corporations believed a Revolution was pending, waiting in the winds , and that many musicians and producers, always marketers, thought they needed a song about altered consciousness to appeal to the gullible teen and the witless rock critic. I assume Crosby was sincere in his attempt to get the experience of having a blown mind in song form, but its a mess. I even thought that in 1967, when I was still in junior high. But beleiver, Younger than Yesterday is a great record.

PHIL LESH AND THE GRATEFUL DEAD

 

The Grateful Dead remain a problematic band for historians who like to place artists in strict genres and loath those who breach the boundaries. The band had equal footing in all things Americana--old time rock, blues, old school rhythm and blues, folk, country, bluegrass-- with the rest of their music easily moving into areas that are modal, jazzy, influenced not a little by Eastern forms of improvisation, and not a little avant gard . Not to say that the majority of this limitless and often exhilarating eclecticism comes from the late Phil Lesh, but the late bass player's already broad musical training and playing experience--theory, composing, playing trumpet in jazz band situations--certainly informs the off-center improvisations his foundation for the Dead. Part of the Dead's musical genius was how they anticipated what the others were going to do in the moment of extemporaneous music making--we generally think of Bob Weir's uncanny skill to be precisely where he needed to be during Garcia's roaming guitar leads. But here we have an isolated and extended example of Lesh's particular genius as a bassist. As has been said in the NY Times obituary, his lines frequently became lead parts in themselves, offering sublime counterpoint and alternative melodic compliments to Garcia's decorative riffing , as well as working in perfect sympathy, simpatico, with the dynamic drum work. Lesh had a jazz player's instincts.

DeLillo's Tale of the Hidden Rock Star

 

Similar in some respects to the film Performance in general idea, Don DeLillo's 1973 novel Great Jones Street is a story of what happens of what happens to the fan base and the larger culture when a revered rock star goes into seclusion. The musician /prophet/poet/stand-in savior is Bucky Wunderlick, a prematurely sainted scribe whose music and lyrics have been scrutinized by fans, critics, philosophers for hints of what the future holds for the world that, evidently, wanted a respite from being the millennial hero. Doubtlessly inspired by the speculative weirdness that ensued after Dylan's famed motorcycle accident and subsequent retreat from public view, DeLillo gets across the idea through satire, parody, monologues, sample song lyrics, odd-ball projections that a media created savior' absence creates another kind of presence, a mystical state of collective speculation which vaguely yet insistently maintains that the personality that gives purpose to millions of lives is not gone but still here, doing their work, to return with something greater, grander, better than what we already have. It's a wildly funny novel, and DeLillo's prose manages the hard job of being dead pan and yet rhythmically lyric.

Bukowski

So was Charles Bukowski one of the great poets of the 20th Century? Some readers think so, I have another view, but it is a question worth asking. The man learned his lessons well from the writers he liked and carved out a style that is his own, spare, funny, memorable, if sometimes redundant.

 Bukowski is one of the best known modern poets, but not as a “great” poet. Charles Bukowski spent several decades writing about three or four things, which were drinking, staying drunk, screwing drunk women, playing the horses, and drinking. His was not a large world, and after reading a raft of short stories,three novels and five of his plenitude of poetry collections, it's safe to say that he'd run out of things to say about the redundant activities of his life. Hence,his redundant themes and the waning energy of his work as his life wore on, with he waiting for it all to be over with. 

Young people love him because Bukowski is as close to an actual nihilist any of them are likely to encounter in American fiction and poetry. His principal failing is his unwillingness to think harder or differently about the world of drink, cigarettes, whores,racetracks and flop houses and bad sex. This poem, as it goes, goes through the typical moves and ends on some winsome sigh about lost opportunity, faded youth, mauling over of some psychic pain that is somehow aimed at making us understand why he is such a luckless asshole. 

Ironically, few writers have been as lucky as this guy, lucky in that the game he ran on us held up all these years, and that it still has enough allure to sucker yet another acolyte who just entering their drunken -brutishness- is -authenticity phase. Bukowski was good at one point in his life, but his lack of interest in the word outside is few blocks of Los Angeles made him progressively less interesting as his years and books wore on.What is distressing is that he decided rather early on his career to rewrite "Love is a Dog from Hell" and "Ham on Rye" for the remainder of his life, marking his work as the stuff of a man who whore'd his talent to become salable to an audience wanting to seem literate without actually doing any reading beyond a certain depth or page length.I just can't shake the feeling that Bukowski's version of despair and beatitude is more a symptom of cornball fantasy than something felt from the gut or the heart. 

He exhausted that vein long before he passed away. He makes me think of someone who creates enormous amounts of anxiety because his life essentially static, full of non-events, sad variations on daily behavior, and rather than go mad and destroy something, he tries to pass off the nagging vibe by writing a lot, in a reserved, occasionally effective prose; still the, fantasy did not resolve what, I think, were his real symptoms. The themes did not change, the moral of the stories were the same funny/sad/fuck you bits of flophouse grit. One realizes, after a bit, that the only thing Bukowski did successfully, besides write the same story over and over, was grow old.

Nick Lowe's Power Pop Gem from the 70s

 
Who guitarist and principal songwriter Peter Townsend coined the now-popular term "Power- pop" in a 1967 interview where he was trying to describe the music of the Beach Boys. Townsend, an unashamed Beach Boy zealot, explained that the Beach Boys were in the vanguard of a new movement of pop music, a pop music that eschews the traditional needs of white rockers to emulate their black mentors and produce a kind of rock and roll that was indigenous to white, middle-class experience. Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys' primary songwriter, merged the creamy, smooth-as-glass harmonies of the Four Freshmen, the rhythm and blues guitar work of Chuck Berry, and wrote lyrics about surfing, fast-cars, puppy love, being true to your school, and so on. Townsend's point about Power-pop was this: it was sleek, professionally rendered pop that never ventured matter, joined with a not-so- raucous rock backbeat." That was a decade ago, and those abounding in enthusiastic chats about pop culture, have now settled firmly into the lingo of the 70s rock critic. Spearheading the new Power-pop movement is Nick Lowe. Lowe, a founding member, and songwriter in the sadly departed Brinsley Schwartz and best known to rock fans as Elvis Costello's producer, released a record last year that laid out Lowe's methodology in the title: Pure Pop for Now People. 

On one level, the title was a perfect parody of the dumb products record companies used to release for consumers they perceived as being witless, gullible, and bereft of any sense of discrimination (i.e.., Jackie Gleason Presents Music for Young Lovers, The Ventures Play the Batman Theme and Other TV Hits). Yet on elements of conceptual sophistication wherein Lowe takes a cue from other artists (Warhol, Stuart Davis) who've taken the artifacts of a throw-away culture and have transformed them into objects of art. Lowe the conceptualizer, wanting nothing to do with the priggish high-toned pretensions of "art-rock" (ELP and Kansas, let us say, not Roxy Music or Steely Dan or Robert Fripp), nor with the knee-jerk anarchy of most punk-rock acts, wanted to produce a music that had the same clean, self-contained aesthetic values of the Beach Boys and the early Who, and yet retained a smart-assed, snot-nosed, wise- guy cynicism. The result, Pure Pop …, was just that: a smorgasbord of borrowed riffs and chord progressions, vocal arrangements lifted from any number of vocal bands from the 60s, a plethora of musical styles that ranged from rockabilly, boogie-blues, to Phil Spector. Pure Pop, though, was far from the knockout it could have been. Lowe's production was except for some catchy tunes ("Breaking Glass," "Heart of the City"), most of the material was no more convincing than the average Sha-Na-Na sendup. Pure Pop, in general, contrived and too deliberate in execution, the old case of an artist being more interested in form than content.

Lowe, though, has made a sizable step forward with his new record, Labour of Lust. Like Pure Pop, the record is a mélange of contrasting styles. and attitudes where Lowe demonstrates an impressive knowledge of hackneyed pop- music forms. Lust, though, fares much better. Lowe's production is sparer this time, unencumbered by unlimited overdubs or an excess of instruments. The musicians on the tracks (unnamed on the jacket, though I suspect it's Dave Edmunds and Rockpile, whom Lowe tours with) sound like a unified band, a unit who've worked out the particulars of each song, and gave performances that, unlike character and nerve. Lowe's new material sounds better as well. The songs have better arrangements, sound more complete, sound more like real songs rather than effete parodies. Lowe's humor is set in a sharper context. "Big Kick, Plain Scrap," featuring one of those James-Brown- style basslines that defines the essence of funk, is overlaid with a mumbling, sleepy voiced vocal that utters a word salad of lyrics sounding like Captain Beefheart (if the Captain were the lyricist for K.C. and the Sunshine Band). "Dose of You," a picture-perfect Buddy Holly emulation, puns relentlessly about VD, mixing up the tired theme of a young man trying to woo a woman with a seldom spoke element of what can happen with love. Lowe remains a bright minor talent who has yet to show that he can break out of his narrow confines, but the improvement on Lust indicated that his will be a career that'll warrant

 OF LINES

This line is the

end of an era

or the start of

a whole new

big bang

from which bold

experiments and

odd comedies emerge.

The line is drawn

or it is uttered

or it falls from a

telephone pole

when the wind

gets snark

and forces

our existences

into inane ironies.

Alone in cold,

dark rooms

as it storms outside

and the

shadows of branches

seem like jagged

scolding fingers

in the remaining light,

we hold our dead phones,

we flip

the switches

that ignite

no light ,

we talk to ourselves

in prayers that

resemble sobs

as the house sways

and sharp

blasts of autumn

air finds the window cracks,

the lines are down

in all regards,

the lines

that bring us

voices

and light and a

sense of

making sense

in an existence

that won't explain itself

or apologize

for the inconvenience,

We need

a connection

to something

that keeps us

in a dimension

we've learned to loathe,

better the

devil you know

we might say,

Every line

he utters

is a lie

but we understand

the language he speaks

and the

light he wants to remove.

JOHN MAYALL WAS A BIGGER DEAL THAN I FIRST THOUGHT

 

While scrolling through the headlines one morning, alternating between laughter and grunts at the day's news, I abruptly stopped. A story caught my eye, prominently displaying a flattering photo of the veteran British bluesman, John Mayall. The prominence of Mayall's photo on the news site sent a chill down my spine, prompting me to read on. The article announced the death of John Mayall, the iconic British blues figure, at the age of 90. A giant no longer walks among us.

Born on November 29, 1933, in Macclesfield, Cheshire, England, John Mayall's pioneering work in the early days of the British Blues movement during the sixties marked a historic milestone in England's pop music history. He, along with other pioneers, sparked a revolution, empowering a generation of musicians to experiment with forms and adapt musical styles such as folk, jazz, blues, and classical, integrating them into the Big Beat. Mayall established the influential band John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, which became the launching pad for a host of dynamic guitar legends like Eric Clapton, Peter Green, Mick Taylor, Harvey Mandel, and Coco Montoya.

A steadfast figure in concerts throughout the 60s and 70s, he released around 50 albums with a constantly rotating and evolving group of musicians. These players adapted to Mayall's vision, creating a blues expression that was both traditional and innovative, direct yet introspective, soothing and invigorating. Mayall may not have reached the heights of success as those who came after him, but it's widely believed that British rock would be markedly different without his early influence. Indeed, Mayall is often considered one of the most significant musical figures of that era.

Mayall's influence was profound during my youth. He, along with Butterfield and Charlie Musselwhite, inspired me to pick up the blues harmonica. Sixty years and innumerable harps later, my passion remains strong. Meeting him and other white blues revivalists from America and Britain changed the course of my life. John Mayall and his Blues Breakers were instrumental in the British blues scene, igniting the guitar hero phenomenon that continues today. Mayall shone a light on Eric Clapton, Peter Green, and Mick Taylor. Although he was a competent yet unremarkable harmonica, guitar, and keyboard player, his true genius was in his leadership. Occasionally, his bands reached a level of synergy that seemed truly groundbreaking. Mayall's ensembles broke the mold and exuded energy.

This is evident in the early Blues Breakers records, and later albums that showcased Mayall’s evolving interpretations of blues music, such as The Turning Point and USA Union. His vocal style was remarkable, reminiscent of Mose Allison and J.B. Lenoir—relaxed, high-pitched, and not merely imitating his idols. While he wasn't a virtuoso like Butterfield or Musselwhite, his harmonica playing was charmingly airy, warmly rustic, with rich chords and exquisite slurs and bends that mirrored the emotion in his voice. What he lacked in flamboyance, he compensated with texture, rhythm, brief sequences, and a powerful use of silence between phrases that captivated listeners. No modern blues harmonica player exists who hasn't been influenced by this man's technique.

Mayall was an able and earnest musician, a chilling and eerie vocalist, a punchy songwriter given to pungent social commentary, but his most demonstrable superpower was a genius as a band leader. His penchant for selecting tasty and distinct blues guitarists and other instrumentalists and allowing those players the full expression of their musical personalities kept the blues grooves fresh and crackling. As with jazz maestros he admired, such as Art Blakey and his Jazz Messengers or the ever-morphing Miles Davis, the musicians in his various groups through the decades provided Mayall with new frameworks to continually retool his unique style of presenting his music. I give Mayall full credit for putting together crackerjack bands that have, at times, made it possible for him to release first-rate albums. The albums I listen to especially are USA Union, featuring the sadly underrated Harvey Mandel on guitar, Larry Taylor on bass, and Sugarcane Harris on violin, and, of course, Turning Point, with the splendid, Paul Desmond like  sax work of Johnny Almond and Jon Mark on acoustic guitar.  

Unlike Paul Butterfield, who expanded the expressive capabilities of blues harmonica with his fluid and rapid explorations, John Mayall's approach was distinct. He favored chords over single-note runs, crafting a signature "chugga-chugga" rhythm, notably in his track "Room to Move." Influenced by a vibrant Latin beat akin to the classic "Tequila," the song vibrates with energy as Mayall locks into the groove. The song's simplicity belies the difficulty of mastering its elements, a challenge I've faced for years in attempting to perfect the harmonica parts, yet the quintessential Mayall sound remains elusive to me.

Among his works, there are several I revisit for a surge of inspiration, especially "Television Eye," which features Harvey Mandel's guitar work on the 1971 album "Back to the Roots." In this shuffling tune, Mayall sets the tone with hauntingly high notes on the harmonica, hinting at a polished texture, while Mandel's guitar provides a pulsating, well-phased accompaniment. Mayall's lyrics reflect a man's realization of his addiction to the television, unable to look away from the images in darkened rooms. Mandel's ensuing solo maximizes the space given by Mayall, showcasing why I consider him among the finest blues rock guitarists of his era.

It wasn’t always his harmonica solos or the blustery verve of his guitarists that made the man’s performances memorable. “Broken Wings”, from Mayall’s 1967 album The Blues Alone . It’s a slow and churning song in a minor key, Mayall filling the spaces with the rounded swells of what sounds like a B3 organ, applying thick, resonating chords over his resigned choked-up vocal. It’s a lament for a lost lover who now must deal with the consequences of the decision they’ve made. The keyboard fills the space with a harrowing sound as the progression descends and the volume lowers, fading into a silence as one would imagine a downcast man would lapse into after the last words have been said. I heard it originally in 1967 and its been one of doleful melodies that come to mind when old heartaches come back for a visit in the lone , late hours.  

It's somewhat tragic that we often only appreciate the full scope of an artist's work—a musician, writer, or artist with a long and evolving career—after they pass away. This is when we truly grasp the depth and breadth of their life's work. I must admit, I hadn't given much thought to Mayall in the last decade and had even been unfairly critical of him at times. However, an unexpected obituary has a way of sharpening one's memory and perspective on history. John Mayall was indeed a necessary figure, an artist who grappled with the stark realities of the blues. He was a straight-talker about the human condition who also strived to keep his music relevant to the era and culture he lived in. He embodied a paradox: a traditionalist but not a formalist, an innovator but not an avant-garde artist. With just a guitar, a harmonica, and a voice of pure sincerity, he sang the blues, delivered the news, and inspired both audiences and fellow musicians to create their own music.

I purchased his albums, acquired a harmonica, and managed to play it quite well, finding a voice that conveys my meaning when words fail me. Thus, I extend my gratitude to John Mayall for this gift, and wish him Godspeed.

(This originally appeared in the San Diego Troubadour. Used with kind permission).

 

 

THE BOYS OF SUMMER

 The Eagles: a band I loathe—a troupe of musicians with obvious talents as songwriters, instrumentalists, and vocalists—who try too hard to secure a significant place in rock and roll history. Despite their apparent charms  and conspicuous skills at being tuneful, you can't shake the burdensome feeling that they're  calculated in nearly everything they attempt. Their rock and roll feels sluggish, their ballads dragged out, more a burden than an expression of pathos. And those strained vocals, reaching for that perfect moment when the voice cracks and then swells dramatically—it’s all a bit much. As for the lyrics, especially the weak variations on the gloom and doom of Nathaniel West's downcast novel Day of the Locust found in “Hotel California,” they appear weepy, whiny, and oddly proud of their own low self-esteem. 

They were a defining band of the 70s , the last hurrah for the country-infused rock that dominated SoCal music, but even a period where narcissistic self-regard left an odious trace in too many lyric sheets, The Eagles capacity to feel sorry for themselves was so pronounced and heavy-handed that it became toxic; it made you feel bad not in an exhilarating way that an artist Elvis Costello could achieve (due, perhaps, to Costello's wisdom in making his rhyming ruing of missed chances more compact, not turning them into speeches), but instead in a way that made one want to take a mallet to the stereo that was broadcasting their songs. Not a good thing, yes?

However, there’s an exception: “Boys of Summer.” This solo effort by Don Henley—a singer I never quite warmed to due to his Rod Stewart/Bob Seger/Willie Nelson affectations—stands out. The song is genuinely good, boasting a well-crafted arrangement of guitar textures and an insistent beat. Henley’s singing here seems to draw from a deeper well of inspiration, beyond the usual manager’s playbook. The lyrics are clipped, terse, and vividly convey the sense of a man haunted by memories of lost love—an Eden he cast himself out of. And then there’s the video: one of the most effective I’ve ever seen in capturing the song’s mood. Black-and-white photography, suitably faded to evoke memories slipping away, blends with home videos superimposed over the stark reality of the present. That scene—the man brooding over his glass-top desk while a Super 8 home film flickers on the wall behind him—is nothing short of brilliant. It encapsulates the stream of regret a man feels when he reflects on the imagined perfection of a past life with the woman of his dreams. 

THE PHILOSOPHY OF CRAP

"Sewage Has It's Say", a poem by Steven Cramer, stinks to the highest reaches of irony, and it's a fine thing too.A monologue in essence, the essence of which is the voice of what we consume processed and reduced to its fouler essences in turn. This is the food we eat and the drinks we imbibe with all the cosmetics of preparation removed, after all the benefits (nutrition, energy) and debits ( obesity, high blood pressure) have been had. Insulted, railed against, invariably used as a pejorative, equated with the foulest intents and deeds a race is capable of, sewage finds it's voice, it talks back to the world that is other wise obliged to consume and make crap and crud an unavoidable consequence; there is hypocrisy here, the fetid mess proclaims, everything winds up in this repulsive stew:

Give me roots prying into the joints

of your main waste line, Charmin

thickening her web first to a nest,

then to a dam, and I'll sluice in reverse,

top the basement tub and spill

into a poem! Damn! I've sunken

to new heights! Will you take

a hint and stomach your disgust?

What does The Thinker look like

he's doing? How come Luther heard

God's thunderclap of justice via faith

whilst sitting on the privy?

Steven Cramer has an especially acute wit to imagine a dark mass taking on a voice one could imagine being intoned by a hammy Shakespearean actor intent on over-emoting the lines, a misunderstood and maligned end product talking shop with a product , Charmin, that's ostensibly dedicated to wiping it out. But wipe as much you can, the stinking sludge maintains, you will become part of this flushed proletariat, these breakdowns of food stuffs, fecal encrusted tissues, diapers, sanitary napkins, condoms, illegal drugs and syringes.

At the heart of the matter is that is we really are what we eat, echoing an otherwise stale counter culture cliché, and regardless of how we gussy up the chambers with spray-can aroma, disinfectants , no matter how much art and artifice we set around our dinner table preparations, regardless to what extreme we pervert language to raise our collective self-image and have our race be at the top of the food chain, we are in the food chain, nonetheless, inseparable, consuming vast amounts of products to keep the mortal body a going concern, producing waste in all varieties, forms.

You know...where love's pitched his mansion, so

don't shower so much. Squeaky clean's

for mice. No soap's got enough tallow

to wash out the mouth mouthing off.

What made you so ... nice? Polite's

kind of like death, isn't it? Okay, not

quite. But consider this, my sweet kin

in excretion: to flies we taste like candy.

Whether it's The Thinker or Theologians considering the feasibility of a personal God, everything resembles the process of taking a dump, a long and ponderous crap, the moment when every idea one has absorbed in passing finally passes through us, if we're lucky enough , leaving only that bit of nutritional purity that has helped us grow, come up with an idea, an invention, a poem that is truly our own. Steven Cramer's personification of an unspeakable and limitless mass of stinking waste as having a voice to raise in it's irony-citing defense is an excellent bit of wit. The literary references are less self-conscious than such citations usually are since his point is to reduce the space between humanity's greatest conceit as an elevated species and the inevitability of it's least appealing biological requirements. Everything is shit, like it or not, all is waste, the finest poems become sludge. One needs to embrace the fact, if not the cistern that contains the messenger.

All reactions:

1Barry Alfonso

My Life and My Music
By Jorma Kaukonen

There's an old joke that goes "If you can remember the Sixties, you weren't there." Those 60 and over go ha-ha, ho-ho, I get it, too many flashbacks, too many bong hits, far too many uppers to balance all those downers, and , too many long drum solos. The conceit was that there was too much experience crammed into too-few years; many of us who thrived and jived on the wide, permissive mores of the Sixties ought to still be overwhelmed, asking ourselves what happened. Who among us might recollect that glorious experiment in living? Jorma Kaukonen, founding member of and lead guitarist for the definitive 60s/San Francisco band Jefferson Airplane, remembers, and brings his recollections together in a new memoir Been So Long: My Life and Music. It's worth noting upfront that the musician, a stalwart figure who preferred to remain in the background, quiet though attentive while fellow JA members Grace Slick and Paul Kanter did the many media interviews admits early on that the book is composed of his recollections of how he remembers events transpired, but that some of what he's recounting might be vague or incomplete in the telling. He offers a disclaimer in the introduction mentioning his imperfect recollection: "...this is my story as I remember it as seen through the prism of my mind's eye. I can do no better than that." 

However reticent Kaukonen was to speak with the press at the peak of his fame with the Airplane (and later with Hot Tuna, his long-term folk and electric blues project with JA bassist Jack Casady), the author’s memory seems to serve him well in these pages. A second generation American of Finnish descent born in Washington DC in 1940, young Kaukonen had already seen much of the world, particularly Philippines and Pakistan courtesy of his father’s diplomatic corps assignments. His early years seemed a case of accidental wanderlust, his family from moving city to city, country to country, with Kaukonen easily making friends in each new home through, it seems, shared interests in music, cars (“gearheads” as they called themselves) and, to be sure, girls. While in Washington he acquired a guitar and began learning traditional folk songs, learned the advantages of keeping his guitar tuned, and made a lifelong friendship with future JA bassist Jack Casady. What Kaukonen realized was that playing music was pretty much what he wanted to do, and muses that music seemed the elixir that made brought a dimension to his life than just merely existing and putting with boring jobs and mean people. Laconically and tersely, he concludes “Music seemed to me to be the reward for being alive.”

The first half of the book is full of reminisces about his family, his two sets of grandparents from Europe in the quest for the opportunities migrations to America promised, and he speaks fondly, lovingly of his parents, aunts and uncles and shares what he recalls of their expectations of a new life in the promised land. Most tellingly, though, was Kaukonen’s seemingly slow but eventual immersion into music. We see in negotiation with his father for a guitar, his playing DC clubs with Casady, with fake IDs, when Casady was playing lead guitar and Kaukonen played rhythm. And we see his growing interest in folk music styles that would become the defining essence of what would become his electric guitar style with Jefferson Airplane. Developing into a fine finger picker and with an affinity for the simple and elegantly articulated patterns of folk-blues, Kaukonen incorporated these techniques into his eventual electric work for the Airplane, giving them a rattling guitar sound unique in an era where every other guitarists fashioned Clapton impersonations. Kaukonen’s style slid and slithered, his leads full of peculiar tunings, odd emphasis on blues bends, and a jarring vibrato that made teeth chatter and nerve endings fire up. It was a style that informed the Airplane’s best songs— “Lather”, “White Rabbit”, “Greasy Heart”—and which was a sound that was an essential part of the complex and wonderful weave that characterized this band’s best albums, from Jefferson Airplane Takes Off through Volunteers.

At a point, Jefferson Airplane were among the top bands of the era, one of the top bands in the world, originating in the counter cultural environs of San Francisco and adventuring beyond those city blocks to perform historical rock gigs such as the Monterey Pop Festival and Woodstock. It was something of a charmed life, Kaukonen was earning a a good amount of money. He was, he admits, willing to start spending it, buying homes, new cars, new equipment. The band was at the top of their game, and on a Dick Cavett, Show following the last night of the Woodstock Art and Music Festival, a myriad of performers—David Crosby, Joni Mitchell, the Airplane, Steve Stills among them—sat around a rather casual set for the program and bantered breathlessly about the monumental experience they’d all just been through. In the afterglow, at that moment, it seemed as though Ralph Gleason’s mid Sixties prediction in Rolling Stone that the Sixties Youth, spearheaded by the music, musicians, troubadours and poets of the time, would change America profoundly, enact a revolution without bloodshed or bombs. The music would set you free. Believe me, I was there, watching the Cavett show at least on my parent’s basement TV, as well as reading the newspaper and 6pm news reports on the massive concert. For a few minutes, just a few, it all seemed possible, especially when watching the beautiful and brilliant Grace Slick and the Teutonically authoritative Paul Kanter lay it out what many took to be a forecast of the American future. Kaukonen was on the set as well, in the background, sitting with his guitar. He was happy to let Slick and Kanter do the talking; as reiterates through the narrative that he was happy to play his guitar and let others be the prophets.

There is much ground Kaukonen tries to cover in Been So Long, but there is a lack of urgency on the author’s part to offer detail, specifics, characteristics or insights connected to the material progression of his story. He is an able writer that conveys a personality that’s sufficiently humble after the long, strange trip he’s been on. He has a gratitude for the gift that have been bestowed upon him and humble in the face of the hard times and deviltries he’s survived.  But there is a kind of cracker barrel philosophy in tone, a succession of incidents, occasions, fetes, celebrations and disappointments in his life, told in sketchy detail summarized with a cornball summation, a reworked cliche, a platitude passing as hindsight. He mentions family, wives, children, famous musicians in a continual flow of circumstances, but does not actually say much beyond the convenient sentiment when you expect him to give a hard-won perspective of his adventures before and after the Rock and Roll Life.Despite having a life’s story that might otherwise seem impossible to tell in a dull manner, Kaukonen seems intent on doing just that.

He does not tell tales out of school, he doesn’t reveal the quirks of his friends.  what he might consider the essence of their genius; structurally the book reads as if it were compiled from note cards and handwritten journals, arranged in order (more or less), assembled for a rapid walk- through rather a revelation of what drew an artistic temperament to this kind of life at all. Kaukonen’s reticence to write more deeply prevents a fascinating and unique tale on the face of it from being more compelling.  It’s as if he’s talking about things he would rather not disclose; the half-measured commitment shows up when he mentions his increasing reliance upon and addiction to alcohol through the book’s chapters. Using phrases from the principle writings of Alcoholics Anonymous as well and peppering his text with 12 step mottoes, it’s apparent from those in recovery where the musician got help for this alcoholism. A large part of the A.A. program is for members to find a God of their understanding, a power greater than oneself which can help them with their problem. For those who have a “God Problem”, the fellowship also refers generically to “a power greater than oneself”. A god of one’s own understanding?

Perhaps an as-told-to memoir like Keith Richard’s memoir Life would have eased more nuance and insight and crucial detail from the hesitant Kaukonen. Richards, speaking at length and on-the-record with collaborator James Fox , the Rolling Stones guitarist speaks frankly and at length about the highlights and low spots of his life in music; free to speak as he pleased to Fox’s probing questions and not having to worry about censoring himself while at the typewriter or with pen -in-hand, Life is a witty, harrowing, bristling account of one remarkable musician’s life. On the surface, Kaukonen’s tale is as full and intriguing as a rock and roll biography requires— worldly as a young man, ROTC, a lover of music and cars, a founding member of one of the most significant bands of the Sixties in the midst of a major cultural revolution, drugs, money, fame, glory, flaming out, regrouping—the outline is here, yet Kaukonen does little to flesh it out or reveal the sex, sizzle and drama under the facts and their note-card descriptions. Richard’s work with a collaborator allowed his mouth to run as long as it needed to tell the best story he had, his own, the final pay off being an engrossing read blessed with Richard’s hard-won and refreshingly off hand wisdom. The Jefferson Airplane guitarist is not so garrulous, is reflectively taciturn and terse, in fact. One needs to respect his right to tell his story as he sees appropriate; the shame is that what is likely a great story doesn’t so much get told as it gets mentioned in passing. Mentioned in passing.Been So Long remains an fascinating read and is an interesting addition of first hand accounts of the psychedelic revolution in the 60s from a key player. The irony here is that Kaukonen does indeed remember the decade—he just doesn’t see the need to get into the weeds , dig in the dirt and relate something fuller, an account of a life fully lived.

MAN OF WEALTH AND TASTE

 A  recent piece in the Washington Post has writer Jason Schwartzman puzzling out the reason why The Rolling Stones have seemingly stopped using the "Who killed the Kennedys" line from Sympathy for the Devil  in their most recent live concerts. A lifelong Stones fan, hearing a song that he's memorized each note, grunt and quasi-lurid lyric absent that reputed "payoff" line  was too much and set the author off on a mini investigation, as such , to find out the why of  the line's elimination. My guess is that the line has worn out its shock value and is, at best, not suitable in an historical moment where Americans seem poised to choose between democracy and totalitarianism in the upcoming Presidential election. Being men of wealth and taste and properly British to the DNA, it didn't seem a proper thing to announce given the current climate . 

It was heavily rumored that the Stones, stricken by unusual levels of concern and moral determination, had  dropped 'Sympathy" from their set list after the 1969 fiasco at Altamont where the Hells Angels murdered Meredith Hunter. It became part of the general mythology of the band, a musical force that wrote a song so cursed with malevolent spirit that they simply had to leave it alone. This was a wide spread belief, but it turns out after all this time to not true, an urban legend, maybe a rumor turned lose by the Stones themselves to distance themselves from the evil the song might have inspired. Mick Jagger did say, to paraphrase, that something to the effect that weird things happen when they play the song. But they never dropped the song from their live performances because, I suppose, commerce is king. After initially loving the song when it first came out, I quickly tired of it. A song created for shock value and maximum impact loses power and relevance with repeated listening. I think it's one of their weakest songs from their richest period. Even when I loved the song back when, I thought the "who killed the Kennedy's " line and the answer "After all , it was you and me" was nothing short of a cop out, another example of Jagger ducking behind theatrical ambivalence . 

Laying the blame on "you and me" for the Kennedy assassinations was a chief device . Mailer in Rolling Stone didn't buy the resolution either and called the song , essentially, a case of all build up with no pay off. Jagger evidently tried to sell the audience on the idea that he might be a Satanist but wanted some plausible deniability. On the matter of songwriters dealing with the assassinations of saints and political heroes, nothing has surpassed Phil Och's masterpiece "The Crucifixion